Urban Shaman. C.E. Murphy

I squinted tiredly at the back of his head. “What are you doing?”

      “Go ask if anybody knows where that church of yours is.”

      My squint turned into lifted eyebrows. “I thought men couldn’t ask for directions.”

      “I ain’t askin’,” Gary said with aplomb. “You are. Go on.”

      I got.

      The pimply kid behind the counter didn’t look happy to see me. Judging from his thrust-out lip and down-drawn eyebrows, I figured he wasn’t happy to see anybody, and didn’t take it personally. He smirked at me when I asked about the church. Smirking is not a nice expression. The only person in the history of mankind who’d been able to make smirking look good was James Dean, and this kid, forgive me Senator Bentsen, was no James Dean.

      I tried, briefly, to remember if I’d been that sullen and stupid when I was sixteen. I figured the fact that I couldn’t remember didn’t bode well, and went straight for the thing I knew would have gotten my attention at that age: cash. I wasn’t usually prone to bribing people, but I was too tired to think of anything else and I was in a hurry. I dug my wallet out and waved a bill at the kid. His eyes widened. I looked at it. It was a fifty.

      Shit.

      “You better walk me to the church for this, kid.”

      He didn’t take his eyes from the bill. “There’s two A-frames I can think of. One’s about five blocks from here. The other is a couple miles away.”

      “Which direction? For both of them.” He told me, still watching the fifty like it was a talisman. I sighed, dropped it on the counter, and muttered, “Thanks,” as I pushed my way out of the gas station. He snatched it up, hardly believing I was really handing it over. Great. I’d just turned a kid onto the lifetime role of snitch.

      Worse, I’d given away a quarter of the meager cash I had on hand, and cabs from SeaTac were damned expensive. I climbed back into the car. “East a few blocks, and if that’s not it, there’s another one to the southwest. Hurry, it’s getting light out.”

      “What, you want to get your fingers in the blood while it’s still warm? You need help, lady.”

      “Joanne.” Having a nosy cabby know my name had to be better than being called “lady” for another half hour. “And you’re the one hung up on corpses. I’m hoping she’s still alive.” I tugged on my seat belt, scowling again. It was starting to feel like a permanent fixture on my face.

      “You always an optimist, or just dumb?”

      A shock of real hurt, palpable and cold, tightened itself around my throat and heart. I fumbled the seat belt. It took effort to force the words out: “You have no right to call me dumb.” I stared out the window, seat belt in one numb hand, trying furiously to blink tears away. Gary looked at me in the rearview, then twisted around.

      “Hey, hey, hey. Look, lady. Joanne. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

      “Sure.” My voice was harsh and tight, almost too quiet to be heard. “Just drive.” I got the seat belt on this time. Gary turned around and drove, quiet for the first time since I’d gotten in the cab.

      I watched streetlights go by in the hazy gold of sunrise, trying to get myself under control. I didn’t generally cry easily and I didn’t generally get hurt by casual comments from strangers. But it had been a long day. More than a long day. A long week, a long month, a long year, nevermind that it was only the fourth of January. And the day was only going to get longer. I still had to stop by my job and get fired.

      The streetlights abruptly winked out as we turned down another street, and with them, my chance to find the runner. A small voice said, “Fuck.” After a moment I realized it was me.

      “That one’s still on,” Gary said, subdued. I looked up, keeping my jaw tight to deny tired, disappointed tears. A bastion of amber stood against the dawn, one single light shining on the entire street. I watched it go by without comprehension, then jerked around so fast I hurt my neck. “That’s it!”

      Gary hit the brakes hard enough to make my neck crunch again. I winced, clutching at it as I pressed my nose against the window. “That’s it, that’s it!” I shrieked. “Look, there’s the church! Stop! Stop!” The car was gone from the parking lot, but there was no mistaking the vicious spire stabbing the morning air. “Holy shit, we found it!”

      Gary accelerated again, grinning, and pulled into the church parking lot. “Maybe you’re not dumb. Maybe you’re lucky.”

      “Yeah, well, God watches over fools and little children, right?” I tumbled out of the cab, getting my feet tangled in the floor mat and catching myself on the door just before I fell. “Well?” I demanded. “Aren’t you coming?”

      His eyebrows elevated before he shrugged and swung his own door open. “Sure, what the hell. I never saw a fresh murdered body before.”

      I closed my door. “Have you seen stale ones?” I decided I didn’t want to know the answer, and strode away. Gary kept up, which surprised me. He was so broad-shouldered I expected him to be short, but he stood a good two inches taller than me. In fact, he looked like a linebacker.

      “You look like a linebacker.”

      “College ball,” he said, disparaging enough that it was obvious he was pleased. “Before it turned into a media fest. It’s all about money and glory now.”

      “It didn’t used to be?”

      He flashed me his white-toothed grin. “It used to be about glory and girls.”

      I laughed, stopping at the church door, fingertips dragging over the handle. They were big and brass and twice as wide as my own hands. You could pull them down together and throw the doors open in a very impressive fashion. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

      “You sure your broad is gonna be in here, lady?”

      “Yeah,” I said, then wondered why that was. It made me hesitate and turn back to the parking lot. Except for Gary’s cab, it was empty. There was no reason the woman couldn’t have gotten into the car with the man with the butterfly knife, no real reason to think she’d even made it as far as the parking lot, much less the church.

      “Yeah,” I said again, but trotted back down the steps. Gary stayed by the door, watching me. The car’d been on the south end of the parking lot, between the woman and the church. I jogged over there, eyes on the ground. I heard Gary come down the steps, rattling scattered gravel as he followed me.

      “What’re you looking for? I thought you said the broad was in the church.”

      I shrugged, slowing to a walk and frowning at the cement. “Yeah, but that’s probably just wishful thinking. I was wondering if there’d been a fight. If the guy with the knife was after her, she’d have had to have gotten thr—”

      “What guy with a knife?” Gary’s voice rose as I crouched to squint at the ground. I looked over my shoulder at him.

      “Didn’t I mention that?”

      “No,” he said emphatically, “you didn’t.”

      “Oh. There was a guy with a knife. He was good, too.”

      “You saw this from a plane?”

      I puffed out my cheeks. “You ever seen somebody who’s good with a knife? Street-good, I mean?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Okay. So have I. It looks a certain way. Graceful. This guy looked that way, yeah, even from a plane.”

      “Lady, you better have like twenty-two-hundred vision.”

      I stood up. The bubble of icky feeling in my stomach was still there, prodding at me like I hadn’t done enough to help the woman. “I wear contacts.”

      Gary snorted derisively. I sighed. “I